Getting rid of one item a day thread number 14 – where we extract precious autumn leaves, rocks and twigs from our children

[stealthninjamummy]

Well I never thought I’d still be here, on the 14th thread where a bunch of mumsnetters get rid of one item a day while we slowly declutter and reorganise our houses.

It’s autumn and some of us have commented on our children’s beloved treasures that are coming in like conkers and precious twigs that have been named. This is the thread where we focus on sneaking these things out and getting the house ready for Christmas even if we don’t know what Christmas will be like this year.

New joiners are always welcome, just get rid of one item and let us know. We’ve all different issues and challenges and it’s nice to have a friendly chat with a fellow mumsnetter.

Previous thread here.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/4003927-Still-throwing-an-item-away-a-day-part-13?pg=1

And for 2020 some of us are also aiming to get rid of 2020 items!

mrstidyhouse I think my scart leads are in a similar place. I have piles of shredded paper, rubbish and charity shop bags in the hall next to the Room of Doom. It looks dreadful.

I did such a job of combing EvilDolls hair that dd2 now wants to keep her. I’m so annoyed with myself, instead of putting her in a bag I left her on the table.

No decluttering today other than finishing last week’s shredding and I cleared old receipts off the kitchen noticeboard, some were from 2016.

Day 76:
Emails and photos
Fridge clear out before shopping arrives so lots of use ups today to eat.
A big bag of recycling out that has been used as toys in a sorting game. So glad that's gone.
Clothes in attic pile that are too small and too big.

Kitchen cupboard diving yielded two outs - a big bag of egg white powder (BBE Nov 2017!) and a large pack of some other protein powder - the best before was 2019 but I couldn’t make out the month.

Had DS1 at home with me today (while his school contacted anybody who had sat near a Covid-positive child in his year, thankfully we did not get a call). He helped me sort out the toy cars & we have gone from 2 drawers to 1. Threw away about 6 & will sell the rest as a big bundle.

Also sent 2 tops to a buyer. Plus threw a few bits of random paper in the recycling.

Returning to the thread after a difficult couple of weeks - everything has been getting to me lately, and just getting the basics done has felt impossible at times. My mum’s house is almost sold, and we need to arrange a clearance company to come in for the furniture etc, which I’m finding it very hard to deal with

Today I went though a pile of invoices from our veg box delivery, ripped off the address/ phone number part at the top of each one (to be shredded), and put the rest in the recycling. I’d let them build up instead of just dealing with it when it arrives. We get the order confirmed by email, but get the paper invoice too as they’re quite an old-fashioned company. It felt good to be productive. I’ll do the shredding tomorrow.

Day 6-14
Had a really bad week last week - have been having CBT and had a session which I think has helped though, and my husband has taken some annual leave this week which is helping so far. I did keep reading this thread, though I wasn't writing on it - reading how well everyone is doing really encouraged me and it's so lovely to read.

Can't remember all the outs, but have got rid of all the junk mail as it comes in (sounds daft writing this, I don't know why I didn't put it straight in recycling before), lots of parcels for ebay (though annoyingly 3 appear to be lost in the post, and one from the week before). Have wrapped a fair few Christmas presents today, so I can try and get them out of the house. Thrown some knickers and socks away. A Christmas candle melted onto a large decoration, so that has gone. A cup and bowl have gone too.

There is another carrier bag for the charity shop when it is open, though I'm not counting that as it is still in the house.

This week I want to go through the rest of my wardrobe and bag up what can go the charity shop, and list some more things on ebay

Three parcels of baby clothes posted - price low and discount high is my strategy so it's not making me much money but it's clearing my house.
Some more bits advertised / sorted for charity.
Baby seat and toy given to two friends.
Bumbo chair scrubbed and bagged for charity shop.

I need to start on the back of the living room and probably sell the inflatable ring i bright for the babies which the 5yo had always liked more than they did. It just takes up so room for so little use. They're not really sitting nicely babies

@ellieQ

Fell off the thread a while back but hope you don't mind if I rejoin.
Outs in the last 2 weeks:
Expired jars at back of fridge
Expired creams and medicines from bathroom
Old paperwork and uni essays in paper recycling
Removed mouldy blind from bathroom
Old mattress and cupboard door collected by council

Have reorganised kitchen cupboards and I can see everything now. Need to get a box of stuff down from the attic to go through but will do that when I go up to get the Christmas tree (not before start of December!)

Haven’t posted for a while. But ditched a pair of gym leggings and a dress of dds which Fil and his gf bought for her. It’s broken ugly and the wrong size. So that’s been binned.

ellieq I’m sorry to hear things are tough. At least once the house is sold it will be a big thing off your mental checklist. And well done on the receipts. The same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago, I found a pile of Sainsbury’s online shopping receipts. I don’t why I let them build up.

Last night after dc went to bed I emptied my handbag. Flylady got me into the habit of doing it every Friday but I haven’t for a month. Anyway I got rid of lots of receipts and pulled out a few packets of mayo, ketchup, salt and pepper, sugar which I’ll use at some point. Whenever I get a takeaway I always get these things because I think they’ll be useful to have in my bag. To be fair my large collection of sachets from Nando’s has brightened many a dull dinner.

Anyway I didn’t do much yesterday, just a bit of washing and some dining room tidying. Today I’m going to spend at least an hour in the Room of Doom but stealthninjaboyfriend is coming over so I might shove all my bedroom crap in a drawer too!

Huge piles of laundry dealt with over the weekend. This week's project is checking uniform for outgrown items. They tend to be piled up for donation, then worn again and back into the washing pile when I'm not properly organised.

Decluttered uniform so far - two outgrown jerseys.
Several items fit only for the ragbag.

Four shelves from DS's old bedroom now in garage.

EllieQ and TheLastMullerCorner Sorry you are having a tough time. Ellie hope the furniture clearance goes ok.

The little one has opened the Christmas cake I'd just bought with their teeth so now I've started decluttering it a few weeks early. I'd forgotten how sharp baby teeth are and didn't think they'd bite into it and open it. There goes the decluttering of baby weight.

Outs: some recycling. The little one decluttered their nap yesterday and got very upset and I didn't get anything done apart from trying to get them to sleep.

My ‘one hour’ in the Room of Doom turned out to be 15 minutes in there and 45 minutes finding homes for things in the rest of the house. I found lots of wires, including two scart leads, and labelled them, I found some finials that got removed when I decorated the playroom in 2013! I put them back.

Outs include lots of papers and children’s art. I also found one DVD to go and two wooden puzzles and a rubics magic from my childhood. I might try to spend another hour in there later as I’m really getting somewhere. I chucked everything out on the carpet a couple of weeks ago and there is now loads of visible carpet from where I’ve got rid of it, file s it or tidied it away.

@AlexTheLittleCat haha so funny, i hope they shared with you 🤣

Day 77:
Photos and emails (yawn)

Lots of toddler art recycled from the art washing line. Going to aim to do that every week, the night before recycling day.

More clothes to go in the attic for too big and too small bags.

Welcome back to those who have had a break. I'll be having a break soon once this baby comes along.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I think I will be glad when the house is sold and it’s over, but also sad as I moved away from my home town (so did my sisters), so it feels very final. I will be going there for a few days before Xmas to finish going through stuff and packing up the things we aren’t keeping for the house clearance. It has made me determined not to have such a clutter-filled home, as my mum kept so much stuff for us to deal with.

Today I shredded the paperwork from yesterday, and (inspired by @stealthninjamummy) I also went through the pile of receipts from online shopping - the oldest ones were from 2015! I feel quite ashamed. Have cut the address part off for shredding tomorrow, and the rest went in the recycling.

This thread is a brilliant idea.

How do people decide when to bin toddler art? DS can produce for or 6 sheets within half an hour of being home!

Not much out today- pair of DHs socks, a padded thing off a toy i got rid of, a stained baby's vest.
BUT I did sort the two bags downstairs into what needed to come upstairs / some bits in the bin AND I actually sorted the bags when I came up. Normally they'd be dumped upstairs waiting for another day. And o made DH sort out his spectacles collection and he binned one pair of glasses (he has 6 more but agreed to move the god damn boxes) so my living room looks much better even for so little stuff being cleared out.

I need to get a load more baby stuff online and maybe look at packing it down more concisely. Then I need to go through all the old toys, esp the electronic ones, to see what doesn't work. And the teddies need thinning out
Those arey big pre Xmas tasks.

sleepingstandingup do it before you get sentimentally attached like me!

Mine are past the toddler stage but I used to find they’d get obsessed with a theme and draw 20 pictures of the same thing so I might keep my favourite one mainly to remember that they were interested in that thing eg the perfect treehouse. I also sometimes used to keep something if it was a development like they suddenly learnt about fingers and did a hand like a circle with 12 lines coming out of it!

I’m now going through these things again and if I can’t remember who did it and when they did it I bin it so you might want to name and date them now.

Hey, same post as yesterday and the previous month! I’m running through items on the to do list. I have added loads of things to do. I’m feeling inspired by strange and thinking of painting my landing. Mentally I have split it into 8 sections other than the bits over the stairs that I couldn’t reach. I wonder if I did one section a day if it could be done by Xmas.

Tip run done yesterday which included, cardboard, blinds tracks, laminate and clothes into the clothes bins.

Apart from general rubbish from Operation Wooden Hill a.k.a the D.I.Y stairs/passage/landing makeover not much has gone out. The walls are currently being plastered (professional) so it's finally coming together and I can see an end in sight! I'm so proud of what we've achieved so far newel posts replaced, hand rails replaced, glass panels fitted and L.e.d lights fitted and understairs cupboard, other odd jobs) so I thought I'd share a sneak peak from last night. Not bad for a fat lass with a disabled dh

Stealth ah I'm glad I've inspired someone! I think it sounds like a plan doing a section at a time. I wish I'd done that and started earlier but I'm "queen of last minute" as dh always says.

It's been hard work and a lot of time was spent measuring, measuring again and then measuring again then cutting only to find out it wasn't right thanks to previous work etc or fixture being odd angles etc.

Going to have 5 mins and catch up on the thread and then get cracking with sorting the bomb site kitchen and sitting room.

I forgot to say welcome littleloopylou how are you doing?

strange that’s amazing! You’re very inspiring. When I can’t sleep at the moment I look up staircases on Pinterest and YouTube and wonder if I can do it myself.

I’m not quite there but I did decide to paint a few walls and get a professional in to do the ones I can’t reach so I started polyfillaing the holes this morning. It turns out ready made polyfilla goes dry and crumbly so I will be decluttering the tub of pollyfilla. I also spent an hour moving things around from the Room of Doom. I’m feeling a but depressed that the rest of the house now has crap everywhere. I have put some book stuff on Facebook to sell and someone is interested so far. I also had odd bits like plastic things and metal parts from god knows what. They’re binned.

Anyway I am now desperate for charity shops to open to get rid of some of the many bags of stuff I have.

I just brought a rubber brush.

I have no idea how much stair carpet boggins i cleared away with it. It does things the hoover never did